Loosely related to my earlier post

[conuly]

Use of convenience foods does not actually reduce cooking time.

I gotta say, that surprised me.

Comments

[peebs1701.livejournal.com]

I don't know, they're comparing using 50% or more convenience foods (and I never considered jarred pasta sauce or frozen vegetables to be convenience foods before) with 20-50%. I think if they really want a fair comparison of convenience food use to non-convenience food use they should do it the right way and compare it to completely scratch cooking. Or at least less than 20% convenience foods considering their definition of the term.

[siderea]

Yeah, and I gotta say, if you aren't saving time using convenience foods (1) you're doing it wrong, cause I can use them to have dinner in 16 minutes or (2) you're using them for some reason other than convenience. For instance, it's a food -- e.g. jarred spaghetti sauce -- that is too laborious or time consuming to make from scratch. In that situation using a convenience food is "convenient" in the sense of compared to making that item from scratch not compared to anything else one could make in the allowed time, so what it's really doing is increasing diversity of foods that are convenient enough to have for dinner. Or it's for some completely other value, like taste; there are people who eat Kraft macaroni and cheeze strictly for the flavor.

One other value, which is why I like some convenience foods, is that their preparation requires less supervision. If I am cooking something on the stove, if I neglect it, it will boil over, burn, etc. If, however, I put a microwave dinner in the microwave, and then go toodle on my computer, the worst that happens is that it gets cold while I forget about it. They claim the researchers paid attention to how "hands on" the meals were, but that's not the same thing as "neglectable".

[peebs1701.livejournal.com]

^^ Yeah, that. And also, with things like frozen vegetables the convenience comes somewhere other than food preparation. They take just as long to prepare as fresh vegetables, but you don't have to shop for fresh vegetables every couple of days and you generally dont' have to worry about them going bad before you get to them.

[conuly]

Spaghetti sauce takes, when I make it, some 30 minutes, only a little longer than the pasta itself. Though every time I do it, I wonder if I really *need* onions in it - I hate chopping onions. (And honestly, every time I do it, I also end up with cold pasta sauce, or overcooked pasta sauce, because I anticipate that it'll take far longer than it ends up requiring.)

If I am cooking something on the stove, if I neglect it, it will boil over, burn, etc.

Once, my sister burned the pasta. I still remind her of it from time to time.

[cumaeansibyl.livejournal.com]

I bought a premade meatloaf because I had a coupon for it, and then I discovered that it takes like an hour and a half to cook this premade meatloaf.

... now I don't have my meatloaf recipe on hand, but I'm pretty sure that it doesn't take an hour and a half to cook a damn meatloaf once you've defrosted your pound of ground beef. And it doesn't take that long to mix your pound of ground beef with your breadcrumbs and other shit anyway. So I'm pretty sure this article is right, as long as you're talking about recipes that don't just need to be warmed up for serving.

[conuly]

Never made meatloaf. That sounds insane.

[leora.livejournal.com]

The article seems to contradict itself. It says that families tended to either save about 10 to 12 minutes, which is a significant total amount of the work time involved or to make more dishes overall. So, either you are getting more total result or saving work.

I don't use convenience foods to save time; I know they often don't, because the base cooking time for the pasta won't vary that much and that's a large part of my cooking time. But I do it to either save energy or be able to eat healthier with the same amount of energy. And it does say that the amount of work is decreased with convenience foods.

[conuly]

I think the real question is "What is it about dinner that forces us to want to spend an hour on it?" Because it does sound to me like every second they saved, they threw right back into the process!

[leora.livejournal.com]

That's a fair question. I don't spend that much time on dinner unless I'm trying to do something special. Although if I did spend more time, I'd have healthier results. For example, I could take the time to make a salad to go with my main dish. But I usually just take 20-30 minutes. And I just make one dish. But I don't have kids.

[mayna.livejournal.com]

I think I either go whole hog and make things totally from scratch, or I use boxed stuff. So homemade shepherd's pie takes a long time to chop up all the vegetables, make mashed potatoes from scratch, soak and boil the lentils, then bake the whole thing. Macaroni and cheese from scratch takes 30 mins to make and 30 more minutes to bake.

Mac n cheese from a box takes maybe 15 minutes to make. Lasagna from the freezer takes 60-90 mins in the oven, but lasagna from scratch takes at least an hour of prepwork and then 30-45 mins to bake.

[sayga.livejournal.com]

2 meals we eat regularly:
frozen chicken cord on bleus
frozen corn/peas

chicken breast
fresh greenbeans/broccoli/carrots
pasta/rice/potato

both take about 1/2 an hour, but the first i dump the frozen stuff into a pan and throw it in the oven, and 5 minutes before it's done, i get up and throw the veggies in water and microwave. the second, i'm pretty much standing in the kitchen working on SOMETHING the entire time. i feel like that article would count both as the same, because they took the same amount of time. neither one is particularly more complex than the other, but one is more healthy, and the other gives me time to tend to screaming children instead of tending food.

sorry for lack of caps. i've been working on stupid paperwork and forms in CAPS all day at work and am much too lazy and scrambled-brained to do that.

[conuly]

Cordon bleu. Two words, no s. (Sorry.)

I didn't notice the caps, though, until you mentioned it. (I'm so tempted to teach Angelique to call them majuscule and minuscule letters, because that matches nicely (and, unlike uppercase and lowercase has never struck me as babyish), but people wouldn't understand her.

mistakes? Who ME??

[sayga.livejournal.com]

Yes, thank you! I stared at that (cordon bleu) for a minute trying to figure out what I'd done wrong, considered googling it, but decided to get back to work instead. It just shows how messed up my brain is from all the forms I've been working on, because I normally don't even have to think to spell things right. It just comes naturally. Argh!

[peebs1701.livejournal.com]

I don't know, they're comparing using 50% or more convenience foods (and I never considered jarred pasta sauce or frozen vegetables to be convenience foods before) with 20-50%. I think if they really want a fair comparison of convenience food use to non-convenience food use they should do it the right way and compare it to completely scratch cooking. Or at least less than 20% convenience foods considering their definition of the term.

[siderea]

Yeah, and I gotta say, if you aren't saving time using convenience foods (1) you're doing it wrong, cause I can use them to have dinner in 16 minutes or (2) you're using them for some reason other than convenience. For instance, it's a food -- e.g. jarred spaghetti sauce -- that is too laborious or time consuming to make from scratch. In that situation using a convenience food is "convenient" in the sense of compared to making that item from scratch not compared to anything else one could make in the allowed time, so what it's really doing is increasing diversity of foods that are convenient enough to have for dinner. Or it's for some completely other value, like taste; there are people who eat Kraft macaroni and cheeze strictly for the flavor.

One other value, which is why I like some convenience foods, is that their preparation requires less supervision. If I am cooking something on the stove, if I neglect it, it will boil over, burn, etc. If, however, I put a microwave dinner in the microwave, and then go toodle on my computer, the worst that happens is that it gets cold while I forget about it. They claim the researchers paid attention to how "hands on" the meals were, but that's not the same thing as "neglectable".

[peebs1701.livejournal.com]

^^ Yeah, that. And also, with things like frozen vegetables the convenience comes somewhere other than food preparation. They take just as long to prepare as fresh vegetables, but you don't have to shop for fresh vegetables every couple of days and you generally dont' have to worry about them going bad before you get to them.

[conuly]

Spaghetti sauce takes, when I make it, some 30 minutes, only a little longer than the pasta itself. Though every time I do it, I wonder if I really *need* onions in it - I hate chopping onions. (And honestly, every time I do it, I also end up with cold pasta sauce, or overcooked pasta sauce, because I anticipate that it'll take far longer than it ends up requiring.)

If I am cooking something on the stove, if I neglect it, it will boil over, burn, etc.

Once, my sister burned the pasta. I still remind her of it from time to time.

[cumaeansibyl.livejournal.com]

I bought a premade meatloaf because I had a coupon for it, and then I discovered that it takes like an hour and a half to cook this premade meatloaf.

... now I don't have my meatloaf recipe on hand, but I'm pretty sure that it doesn't take an hour and a half to cook a damn meatloaf once you've defrosted your pound of ground beef. And it doesn't take that long to mix your pound of ground beef with your breadcrumbs and other shit anyway. So I'm pretty sure this article is right, as long as you're talking about recipes that don't just need to be warmed up for serving.

[conuly]

Never made meatloaf. That sounds insane.

[leora.livejournal.com]

The article seems to contradict itself. It says that families tended to either save about 10 to 12 minutes, which is a significant total amount of the work time involved or to make more dishes overall. So, either you are getting more total result or saving work.

I don't use convenience foods to save time; I know they often don't, because the base cooking time for the pasta won't vary that much and that's a large part of my cooking time. But I do it to either save energy or be able to eat healthier with the same amount of energy. And it does say that the amount of work is decreased with convenience foods.

[conuly]

I think the real question is "What is it about dinner that forces us to want to spend an hour on it?" Because it does sound to me like every second they saved, they threw right back into the process!

[leora.livejournal.com]

That's a fair question. I don't spend that much time on dinner unless I'm trying to do something special. Although if I did spend more time, I'd have healthier results. For example, I could take the time to make a salad to go with my main dish. But I usually just take 20-30 minutes. And I just make one dish. But I don't have kids.

[mayna.livejournal.com]

I think I either go whole hog and make things totally from scratch, or I use boxed stuff. So homemade shepherd's pie takes a long time to chop up all the vegetables, make mashed potatoes from scratch, soak and boil the lentils, then bake the whole thing. Macaroni and cheese from scratch takes 30 mins to make and 30 more minutes to bake.

Mac n cheese from a box takes maybe 15 minutes to make. Lasagna from the freezer takes 60-90 mins in the oven, but lasagna from scratch takes at least an hour of prepwork and then 30-45 mins to bake.

[sayga.livejournal.com]

2 meals we eat regularly:
frozen chicken cord on bleus
frozen corn/peas

chicken breast
fresh greenbeans/broccoli/carrots
pasta/rice/potato

both take about 1/2 an hour, but the first i dump the frozen stuff into a pan and throw it in the oven, and 5 minutes before it's done, i get up and throw the veggies in water and microwave. the second, i'm pretty much standing in the kitchen working on SOMETHING the entire time. i feel like that article would count both as the same, because they took the same amount of time. neither one is particularly more complex than the other, but one is more healthy, and the other gives me time to tend to screaming children instead of tending food.

sorry for lack of caps. i've been working on stupid paperwork and forms in CAPS all day at work and am much too lazy and scrambled-brained to do that.

[conuly]

Cordon bleu. Two words, no s. (Sorry.)

I didn't notice the caps, though, until you mentioned it. (I'm so tempted to teach Angelique to call them majuscule and minuscule letters, because that matches nicely (and, unlike uppercase and lowercase has never struck me as babyish), but people wouldn't understand her.